Ex-‘Walking Dead’ showrunner slammed AMC for “fucking up my show” in series of stinging emails

Frank Darabont is suing the US network for £215 million after claiming his team were denied their rightful share of profits from the show

The former showrunner of The Walking Dead explicitly slammed its network, AMC, for “fucking up my show” during a string of irate emails sent in 2011.

Frank Darabont developed and executively-produced the hit show during its first season, while he also directed and wrote the first-ever Walking Dead episode in October 2010. He was fired from the show by AMC in June 2011 over disagreements with the network’s executives and budgeting problems.

Darabont is currently suing AMC, with the creative seeking $280m (£215m) after claiming that he and his team were denied a fair share of profits from The Walking Dead.

In new court documents obtained by The Hollywood Reporter, the full extent of Darabont’s rapidly-deteriorating relationship with AMC has been revealed through a series of emails he sent in 2011.

After the show’s budget was cut by 25% during the filming of its second season, Darabont and AMC’s relationship began to sour dramatically.

The Walking Dead

Writing in an email to executive producer Gale Anne Hurd in June 2011, Darabont said: “Fuck you all for giving me chest pains because of the staggering fucking incompetence, blindness to the important beats, and the beyond-arrogant lack of regard for what is written being exhibited on set every day.

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“I deserve better than a heart attack because people are too stupid to read a script and understand the words. Does anybody disagree with me? Then join the C-cam operator and go find another job that doesn’t involve deliberately fucking up my show scene by scene.”

In another email, Darabont asked why camera operators were being paid when “Ray Charles could operate better.”

AMC’s lawyers commented on Darabont’s firing by saying in court papers: “Darabont’s erratic and unprofessional performance and his behavioral and interpersonal issues during Season 2 raised a number of concerns for AMC Studios.

“Among other things, his failure to timely deliver scripts, failure to adequately supervise the writers’ room, and his volatile and disturbing interactions with staff and talent were impacting production.”

Andrew Lincoln as Rick in ‘The Walking Dead’

Darabont, however, made clear in his affidavit that “each of these emails must be considered in context. They were sent during an intense and stressful two-year period of work during which I was fighting like a mother lion to protect the show from harm — not only on my own behalf, but ironically also on behalf of AMC.

“Each of these emails was sent because a ‘professional’ showed up whose laziness, indifference, or incompetence threatened to sink the ship of production and added unfair and unnecessary burden to their colleagues in the cast and crew… My tone was the result of the stress and magnitude of this extraordinary crisis.

“The language and hyperbole of my emails were harsh, but so were the circumstances. As for the enormous problems they describe, I stand by these emails to the last detail.”